Turning Point Trumpism

By Robert Hampton

Charlie Kirk at CPAC, where a cardboard flat = truth in advertising

Another CPAC has come and gone, and national populism was almost non-existent at this year’s conservative gala.

Even though Donald Trump became president on a national populist agenda that challenged conservative orthodoxy on immigration, foreign policy, trade, and state power, CPAC 2019 offered the impression he won on the stale conservatism of Ronald Reagan.

The major themes of CPAC 2019 were the evils of socialism (but no mention of why it’s becoming popular), the sheer awesomeness of Israel, pandering to non-whites, and the greatness of capitalism. There was only one panel on immigration, none advocating foreign policy realism, and just two speeches that delivered a nationalist message. One was from the Italian nationalist politician Giorgia Meloni, which largely went unnoticed.

The other was from conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, which did get noticed. Malkin scorched Republican leaders for failing their voters on immigration and insisted diversity is not a strength. It was the highlight of a depressing conference that banned nationalists and followed the orders of Left-wing reporters.

The low point of the conference came from Trump himself. The president gave a rambling, two-hour speech on the final day of the conference in which he voiced support for increasing immigration. “We want people to come in. We need workers to come in, but they’ve got to come in legally and they’ve got to come in through merit,” Trump said, admitting this message was different from what he campaigned on.

The reason for this alleged need to increase immigration was to satisfy the demands of “our corporations,” a sentiment alien to the spirit of national populism. Trump once promised a new movement on the Right that would push the interests of white America against the dictates of globalism. Now we’re treated to the same old platitudes. “We stand with Israel!” “Socialism sucks!” “Tax cuts rock!” It’s movement conservatism dressed up with funny tweets and quasi-populist bravado.

There’s unfortunately a group that represents this sad vision of Trumpism—sans the funny tweets. Turning Point USA was the dominant presence at CPAC, according to The Daily Beast. TPUSA’s young leader, Charlie Kirk, had a presence everywhere, including a giant cardboard cutout of himself that CPAC attendees could take a picture with. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel praised Kirk and fellow TPUSA figure Candace Owens, saying the party needs more leaders like them. Several other speakers, including President Trump, also gave shout outs to Kirk, Owens, and TPUSA for the “incredible work” the group does.

TPUSA represents Trumpism stripped of nationalist policies and a clear sense of purpose. This is Trumpism as a personality cult advocating for low-IQ movement conservatism. It doesn’t fight for white America, it grifts off white America.

TPUSA’s mission statement claims it is a group that works “to educate students about the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government. Through non-partisan debate, dialogue, and discussion, Turning Point USA believes that every young person can be enlightened to true free market values.”

That hardly sounds like America First nationalism.

The group is bankrolled by numerous conservative donors and is the most prominent conservative student group at the moment. That achievement is largely due to its founder, Charlie Kirk, glomming onto the Trump family and moment. Kirk hasn’t really changed the message of the group to conform to the Trump moment outside of sycophantic praise for the president. The 25-year-old TPUSA leader is still primarily concerned with promoting the glories of capitalism and how kids just want tax cuts.

Kirk showcased this divergence from the populist zeitgeist in a debate with Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Tucker suggested America should think of itself as a family, to which Kirk loudly objected. “It is not government’s role to take care of its citizens!” Kirk argued. Carlson laughed at that claim and wondered what’s the role of government if not to take care of its citizens. Kirk only offered the government’s responsibility “to provide for the national defense”… which is taking care of its citizens.

Campaign Trump would have taken Carlson’s side. The then-candidate’s arguments against mass immigration, neoconservative foreign policy, and bad trade deals always focused on how these things hurt American citizens and it was the government’s job to right these wrongs. National Review writer Kevin Williamson attacked candidate Trump for imagining the nation as a family in his infamous 2016 essay hoping for the death of white working-class communities.

Candace Owens is the perfect symbol of the degraded Trumpism TPUSA promotes. Owens didn’t even vote for Trump. In 2016, she was a public liberal who ran a dox sitefocused on “racists.” Soon after Trump won, Candace rebranded as “RedPillBlack” and made videos on how Democrats were the real racists. Based blacks are always a hit with white conservatives, and Owens has milked the grift for all its worth. She’s a leader of the conservative movement and just launched her own show on the very popular PragerU YouTube channel.

It’s unclear what political principles Ms. Owens has besides grabbing attention and supporting whatever Trump does. The only policy she has advocated with gusto is criminal justice reform, a policy she claims would win over non-white felons for the GOP. Owens has accused Republicans who oppose this policy that would prioritize the interests of non-whites over the safety of whites of, gasp!, racism. She deridedArkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s opposition to the policy as a denial of “opportunity to millions of black Americans.”

That statement smacks of the “identity politics” TPUSA rails against, but on that issue, the group displays remarkable hypocrisy. Judging by the group’s conferences and rhetoric, the only form of identity politics that is not okay is white identity politics. TPUSA has organized leadership conferences for blacks, Hispanics, and women and it frequently touts Trump’s dumb talking points about how much his presidency is benefitting women and minorities.

Owens is spearheading the ultimate expression of conservative non-white identity politics: “Blexit.” Blexit is a well-funded venture to convince blacks to leave the Democrat plantation. The primary pitches are: Dems R The Real Racists, low black unemployment, Kanye West, and criminal justice reform. So far, Blexit hasn’t made any inroads in the black community for the GOP. It was debuted right before the election, but, once again, less than ten percent of blacks voted Republican in 2018. The first Blexit event in January drew in a predominately white audience, demonstrating this latest endeavor at non-white pandering is a farce.

Kirk and Owens aren’t just limiting their efforts to the US. In February, Turning Point UK was launched with a bevy of minority faces fronting the group. One of the first videos put out by TPUK included a list of what they are fighting for and what they are fighting against. The things TPUK fights for are: free markets, free speech, free nations, free people, limited government, personal responsibility, and common sense. What they fight against: socialism, racism, identity politics, alt-right, alt-left, nativism, and collectivism.

In other words, they fight for the interests of corporations against genuine nationalism. The video outlining what they fight for claims they want to work with “mainstream organizations” to “build a fresh movement.” The purpose of the group appears to play gatekeeper for the British Right and exclude actual nationalists from the discussion.

TPUK’s other videos are similarly goofy, sporting such titles as, “Sorry to disappoint, but I’m not a socialist,” “The Racism of the Left,” “I’m Conservative and Gay. So What?,” and “I’m Literally a Capitalist.” Unsurprisingly, the launch of the group was met with mockery and derision by the British. Leftists mocked it on Twitter, journos called the cucky group “alt-right,” and the Conservative Party warned its young members to not associate with TPUK. The good bit of news is that the group won’t be able to play gatekeeper due to its low reputation. The bad news is that the group netted the support of prominent politicians like Jacob Rees-Mogg and has plenty of funding to continue its stupid mission.

TPUSA raised $8.2 million from July 2016 to June 2017 largely on the premise it would wean young people away from socialism and big government. However, the main consumers of TPUSA’s message are boomers. According to the data gleaned from TPUSA’s Facebook advertising, the primary demographic for the group’s terrible memes is the 55-64 age group. People under the age of 34 constitute less than eight percent of the average consumer pool for TPUSA’s ads.

It should be no surprise that this group struggles to win over young people. Its aesthetics are terrible, its message is Boomer-fried, its most famous activism put college students in diapers, and its leaders are obvious grifters. Compare the astroturfed nature to that of Identity Evropa, a bona fide youth movement that overcomes far more challenges to win over young people. That’s a group that actually expresses the Trump moment, but its leader, Patrick Casey, was banned from CPAC. Grifting is more acceptable than nationalism.

TPUSA’s continued success and influence is due to the Trump apparatus’ embrace of the group. It’s why the GOP celebrates their efforts and CPAC lets them run their event. National Review types dislike TPUSA as much as the Dissident Right does, but their distaste doesn’t seem to affect the group’s power.

Conservative youth groups have nearly always been stupid efforts to convince young people to embrace ideologies antithetical to their interests. TPUSA is just the most visible and influential expression of this trend. It would be nice if we could sit and laugh at their harmless diaper protests. Sadly, the people on the American Right with power think they’re awesome and prefer their message to the national populism of Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter.

Trump didn’t win the presidency on TPUSA’s message. He won because he challenged the idiocy of Conservative Inc. and offered a new Right-wing alternative to the GOP’s failures. But since he won, the president has made too many concessions to the idiocy he ran and won against.

It appears that Trump’s 2020 message will have more in common with TPUSA than Carlson. Middle America will be treated to the tired message of tax cuts, more aid for Israel, “socialism bad,” and more immigrants for corporations. And Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens will be right there with Trump as he abandons Trumpism to tout TPUSAism.

National populism is still the most viable right-wing ideology in America. It just needs a new champion — or for its old champion to come to his senses.

Trump's Betrayal Of White America

                               By Alex Graham

         

“Unlike other presidents, I keep my promises,” Trump boasted in a speech delivered on Saturday to the Republican Jewish Congress at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas. Many in the audience wore red yarmulkes emblazoned with his name. In his speech, Trump condemned Democrats for allowing “the terrible scourge of anti-Semitism to take root in their party” and emphasized his loyalty to Israel.

Trump has kept some of his promises. So far, he has kept every promise that he made to the Jewish community. Yet he has reneged on his promises to white America – the promises that got him elected in the first place. It is a betrayal of the highest order: millions of white Americans placed their hopes in Trump and wholeheartedly believed that he would be the one to make America great again. They were willing to endure social ostracism and imperil their livelihoods by supporting him. In return, Trump has turned his back on them and rendered his promises void.

The most recent example of this is Trump’s failure to keep his promise to close the border. On March 29, Trump threatened to close the border if Mexico did not stop all illegal immigration into the US. This would likely have been a highly effective measure given Mexico’s dependence on cross-border trade. Five days later, he suddenly retracted this threat and said that he would give Mexico a “one-year warning” before taking drastic action. He further claimed that closing the border would not be necessary and that he planned to establish a twenty-five percent tariff on cars entering the US instead.

Trump’s failure here is his alone. Closing the border could be accomplished with a simple executive order. It has happened before: Reagan ordered the closing of the border when DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena was murdered on assignment in Mexico in 1985, for instance.

Trump’s empty threats over the past two years have had real-world consequences, prompting waves of migrants trying to sneak into the country while they still have the chance. His recent move to cut all foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador is another empty gesture that will probably have similar consequences. The funds directed to those countries were used for programs that provided citizens with incentives not to migrate elsewhere. (The situation was not ideal from an isolationist point of view, but a wiser man would have built the wall before cutting off the aid.)

The past two years have seen a surge in illegal immigration without precedent in the past decade. Since late December, the Department of Homeland Security has released 125,565 illegal aliens into the country. In the past two weeks alone, 6,000 have been admitted. According to current projections, 2019 will witness around 500,000 to 775,000 border crossings. Additionally, about 630,000 illegal aliens will be added to the population after having overstayed their visas. By the end of the year, more than one million illegal aliens will have been added to the population:

These projections put the number of illegal aliens added to the U.S. population at around one to 1.5 million, on top of the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens who are already living across the country. This finding does not factor in the illegal aliens who will be deported, die over the next year, or leave the U.S. of their own will. As DHS data has revealed, once border crossers and illegal aliens are released into the country, the overwhelming majority are never deported.

In February, Trump signed a bill allowing the DHS secretary to add another 69,320 spots to the current H-2B cap of 66,000. On March 29, DHS began this process by announcing that it would issue an additional 30,000 H-2B visas this year. The H-2B visa program allows foreign workers to come to the US and work in non-agricultural occupations. Unlike the H-1B program, a Bachelor’s degree is not required; most H-2B workers are employed in construction, maintenance, landscaping, and so on. The demographic most affected by the expansion of the H-2B program will be unemployed working-class Americans. This flies in the face of Trump’s promise to protect American workers and stop importing foreigners.

Trump has indicated that he has plans to expand the H-1B visa program as well. “We want to encourage talented and highly skilled people to pursue career options in the U.S.,” he said in a tweet in January.

Trump’s betrayal of American workers is perhaps best encapsulated by the fact that one of the members of the advisory board of his National Council for the American Worker(which claims to “enhance employment opportunities for Americans of all ages”) is the CEO of IBM, a company that has expressed a preference for F-1 and H-1B visa holders in its job postings.

Trump has been working on legal immigration with Jared Kushner, who has quietly been crafting a plan to grant citizenship to more “low- and high-skilled workers, as well as permanent and temporary workers” (so, just about everyone). Kushner’s plan proves the folly of the typical Republican line that legal immigration is fine and that only illegal immigration should be opposed. Under his plan, thousands of illegal aliens will become “legal” with the stroke of a pen.

There is a paucity of anti-immigration hardliners in Trump’s inner circle (though Stephen Miller is a notable exception). Trump has surrounded himself with moderates: the Kushners, Mick Mulvaney, Alex Acosta, and others. There are more former Goldman Sachs employees in the Trump White House than in the Obama and Bush administrations combined.

The new DHS secretary, Kevin McAleenan, who was appointed yesterday following Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation, is a middle-of-the-road law enforcement official who served under Obama and Bush and is responsible for the revival of the “catch-and-release” policy, whereby illegal aliens are released upon being apprehended. It was reported last week that Trump was thinking of appointing either Kris Kobach or Ken Cuccinelli to a position of prominence (as an “immigration czar”), but this appears to have been another lie.

Trump’s failure to deliver on his promises cannot be chalked up to congressional obstruction. Congress. As Kobach said in a recent interview, “It’s not like we’re powerless and it’s not like we have to wait for Congress to do something. . . . No, we can actually solve the immediate crisis without Congress acting.” Solving the border crisis would simply demand “leadership in the executive branch willing to act decisively.” Kobach recently outlined an intelligent three-point plan that Trump could implement:

1. Publish the final version of the regulation that would supersede the Flores Settlement. The initial regulation was published by the Department of Homeland Security in September 2018. DHS could have published the final regulation in December. Inexplicably, DHS has dragged its feet. Finalizing that regulation would allow the United States to detain entire families together, and it would stop illegal aliens from exploiting children as get-out-of-jail free cards.

2. Set up processing centers at the border to house the migrants and hold the hearings in one place. The Department of Justice should deploy dozens of immigration judges to hear the asylum claims at the border without releasing the migrants into the country. FEMA already owns thousands of travel trailers and mobile homes that it has used to address past hurricane disasters. Instead of selling them (which FEMA is currently doing), FEMA should ship them to the processing centers to provide comfortable housing for the migrants. In addition, a fleet of passenger planes should deployed to the processing centers. Anyone who fails in his or her asylum claim, or who is not seeking asylum and is inadmissible, should be flown home immediately. It would be possible to fly most migrants home within a few weeks of their arrival. Word would get out quickly in their home countries that entry into the United States is not as easy as advertised. The incentive to join future caravans would dissipate quickly.

3. Publish a proposed Treasury regulation that prohibits the sending home of remittances by people who cannot document lawful presence in the United States. This will hit Mexico in the pocketbook: Mexico typically brings in well over $20 billion a year in remittances, raking in more than $26 billion in 2017. Then, tell the government of Mexico that we will finalize the Treasury regulation unless they do two things to help us address the border crisis: (1) Mexico immediately signs a “safe third country agreement” similar to our agreement with Canada. This would require asylum applicants to file their asylum application in the first safe country they set foot in (so applicants in the caravans from Central America would have to seek asylum in Mexico, rather than Canada); and (2) Mexico chips in $5 billion to help us build the wall. The threat of ending remittances from illegal aliens is a far more powerful one than threatening to close the border. Ending such remittances doesn’t hurt the U.S. economy; indeed, it helps the economy by making it more likely that such capital will be spent and circulate in our own country. We can follow through easily if Mexico doesn’t cooperate.

It would not be all that difficult for Trump to implement these proposals. Kobach still has faith in Trump, but his assessment of him appears increasingly to be too generous. It is hard to escape the conclusion that Trump is not actually interested in curbing immigration and reversing America’s demographic decline. He is a con artist and a coward who is willing to betray millions of white Americans so that he can remain in the good graces of establishment neoconservatives. At the same time, he wants to maintain the illusion that he cares about his base. As Ann Coulter has put it, “He’s like a waiter who compliments us for ordering the hamburger, but keeps bringing us fish. The hamburger is our signature dish, juicy and grilled to perfection, you’ve made a brilliant choice . . . now here’s your salmon.” Nearly everything Trump has done in the name of restricting immigration has turned out to be an empty gesture and mere theatrics: threatening to close the border, offering protections to “Dreamers” in exchange for funding for the ever-elusive wall, threatening to end the “anchor baby” phenomenon with an executive order (which never came to pass), cutting off aid to Central American countries, claiming that he will appoint an “immigration czar” (and then proceeding to appoint McAleenan instead of Kobach as DHS secretary), and on and on.

While Trump has failed to keep the promises that got him elected, he has fulfilled a number of major promises that he made to Israel and the Jewish community.

First, he moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump claimed that the move would only cost $200,000, but in reality it will end up being more than $20 million. The construction of the embassy also led to a series of bloody protests; it is located in East Jerusalem, which is generally acknowledged to be Palestinian territory.

Second, he pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal. Netanyahu claimed on Israeli TV that Israel was responsible for convincing him to exit the deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran. (Both Trump and Netanyahu falsely alleged that Iran lied about the extent of its nuclear program; meanwhile, Israel’s large arsenal of chemical and biological weapons has escaped mention.)

Third, he put an end to American funding for Palestinians. This coincided with the passing of a bill that codified a $38 billion, ten-year foreign aid package for Israel. Trump also authorized an act allocating an additional $550 million toward US-Israel missile and tunnel defense cooperation.

Fourth, he recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights (in defiance of the rest of the world, which recognizes the Golan Heights as Syrian territory under Israeli occupation). Trump’s Golan Heights proclamation was issued on March 21 and was celebrated by Israel.

Trump’s track record on Israel shows that he is capable of exercising agency and getting things done. But he has failed to address the most pressing issue that America currently faces: mass immigration and the displacement of white Americans. The most credible explanation for his incompetence is that he has no intention of delivering on his promises. There is no “Plan,” no 4-D chess game. The sooner white Americans realize this, the better.

Donald Trump The Long Con

                                By Quintilian

         

Anybody want to buy a used MAGA cap? Grilling season starts next month, and I hope that Ann Coulter takes me up on my offer to stop by with remaindered copies of In Trump We Trust. They should burn fine in my fire pit as we roast wieners, drink martinis, and lament the passing of a future that was never to be, like those jetpacks and flying cars from Popular Mechanics circa 1957. Donald Trump’s betrayal of his voting base concerning immigration is so profound and disheartening that if I were a teenage girl I might be listening to “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” nonstop on auto-replay, but since I pride myself on my toxic masculinity, my thoughts run more to Patrick Henry: “Julius Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First had his Cromwell – and may George the Third learn from their examples.” But Donald Trump will not learn from their examples – not because he can’t – but because he has no intention of doing so.

I held out hope for a long time – probably longer than I should have – that I would not need to pen these words, but the overwhelming evidence can only lead to one conclusion: Donald Trump is nothing more than Jeb Bush with a trophy wife. Hindsight is indeed 20/20 vision, and nowhere is this seen to greater effect than in a reassessment of the first two years of the Trump administration. Why all the appointments to positions in the Executive Branch of individuals who publicly oppose Trump’s alleged domestic and foreign policies? Why was Kris Kobach never offered a cabinet position? Why are there more Goldman Sachs alumni in Trump’s administration than in the Obama and Bush II administrations combined? Why is Mitt Romney’s niece the Chair of the Republican National Committee? The answers to all of these questions are simple and the same: Donald Trump is a NINO – a nationalist in name only. He talks a good game, but his actions are strictly GOP/Uniparty establishment globalism. Donald Trump isthe GOP-e, a newer, cruder, flashier version of the old GOP-e, but the GOP-e nonetheless.

The hostility exhibited toward Trump is in reality an argument about style, not substance. The Percy Dovetonsils types in the old GOP-e, like George Will, Rob Portman, and Lamar Alexander, might lament Trump’s lack of an Oxford stutter or interest in the finer points of polo, but they can’t complain too much about what Trump has actually delivered: record-high illegal and legal immigration, corporate tax cuts and deregulation, a hands-off approach to antitrust, continued erosion of free speech, and a new war on the horizon in Venezuela to replace the war that’s winding down in Syria. If the members of the loony Left weren’t so loony, they’d realize that Trump’s their guy. There isn’t that much difference between the results of Donald Trump’s actions and the desires of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s policies. Open borders, deplatforming, loss of civil rights for whites – you name it. Sure, Trump still says he’s for the Second Amendment, but what value is a promise from Donald Trump? Hey, everything’s negotiable, including beliefs and morality. Remember, it’s the Art of the Deal. It should give one pause that the book that reveals the true inner nature of Donald Trump was ghostwritten. What Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, California applies every bit as well to Donald Trump: There’s no there there.

Those poor souls who continue to view Trump as the Great White Hope God Emperor need to come to grips with the fact that Donald Trump has played all of us like fools. There’s no “Plan,” there’s no 4- or 5- or 6-D chess game, and there’s no great magician offstage pulling the strings. What Donald Trump has actually been engaging in during his presidency is far simpler, but even more subtle. It’s called the Long Con, a grifting enterprise that can last years. Think of Bernie Madoff, think of a bigamist who juggles five unsuspecting wives for twenty years, think of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos con. Donald Trump is the political equivalent.

Trump wanted to be President, and he’s a clever fellow. He quickly realized that opposition to immigration was a winning ticket, and he stuck to his position and it paid off. There was only one problem, and it only becomes evident in retrospect: Trump never believed in his own agenda. It was just a storyline, like the storylines that are developed by the writers of reality shows. A good story needs a protagonist and an antagonist. Trump set himself up as David going against the swamp’s Goliath, but it’s as fake as the “feuds” in the WWE. In the end, the script always reaches its predetermined conclusion. In Trump’s case, he needed to jettison his anti-immigration stance while simultaneously appearing to support it. He deliberately put people in his administration who sabotaged his policies while demeaning those (like Jeff Sessions) who actually supported his alleged agenda.

Simply put, Donald Trump is a huckster, a master of the Long Con. He is without a moral center and possesses no shame. He has betrayed his base of support, the millions of white Americans who have endured physical and verbal abuse just for wearing a MAGA hat. He has turned his back on his supporters, some of whom have lost their jobs when it became known to their employers that they support Trump. He has done nothing to restore the First Amendment rights of his supporters when they have been banned from social media. He has done nothing to curb the power of the globalist oligarchs who continue to outsource American jobs abroad to cheaper and less qualified foreigners. Trump’s immigration sellout is a slap in the face to all the forgotten men and women who continue to be forgotten. Trump’s duplicity, mendacity, and treachery towards the people who elected him to office is so vile and revolting that it beggars description. I personally know an elderly woman on a fixed income who in 2016 scrimped and saved from her already meager food budget just so she could send five dollars to the Trump campaign because she believed that Trump was the first person in her lifetime who spoke for the needs of the white working class. In this instance, Trump’s immigration sellout is nothing less than a cynical exploitation of an elderly person, a sweet and innocent soul who probably skipped a couple of meals because she wanted to do something to support a man she thought would bring about a better world for her grandchildren. How is Donald Trump any better than Bernie Madoff? Madoff just conned you out of your money. Trump has conned white Americans out of a better world for their children and grandchildren.

It was always difficult to reconcile one’s support for Trump. The tweeting got old fast, the whoring showed a lack of taste as well as a lack of morals and self-control, and the Brooklynesque braggadocio and vulgarity has never traveled well west of the East River. Yet, there was always the idea that if we just held our noses a little while longer and gave him another break, Donald Trump would produce results. Because he’s a winner. He’ll tell you that, and so will his ghostwriter.

Well, Donald Trump isn’t a winner. But he’s not exactly a loser, either. What Donald Trump really is is a liar. He lies constantly, and he lies about everything. His mendacity knows no bounds. He is reprehensible and vile. He is a gamma male with an alpha male mouth. He is a huckster, a con artist, a grifter, a side-show hawker, a snake oil salesman. By his actions, he has abused, taken advantage of, and exploited his working class base of supporters. He has delivered nothing. Indeed, he has made matters worse. In the next century, when the remnants of what used to be Western civilization are hiding in caves in order to preserve the last few books and artworks from destruction by the marauding barbarians, Donald Trump’s betrayal of his base will be spoken of in terms once reserved for Benedict Arnold and Judas Iscariot.

Donald Trump does not deserve impeachment. The only punishment fit for Donald Trump is eternal damnation in the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Inferno. And the even sadder thing is that Trump stands a very good chance of getting reelected, because the Democrats are even worse.

God help the white race!

The Fallacy Of Progress

                             By Kerry Bolton

            

Our “progressive” obsessions for change neglect to consider consequences. Change is demanded for the sake of a fad or a slogan: “equality,” “democracy,” “reproductive rights” . . . Even a word of caution is damned as “reactionary,” “old-fashioned,” or “fascist.” Traditions, customs, and beliefs are regarded as being as transient as the planned obsolescence of computers. The assumption by the “positivists” is that history is a straight line from “progress” and “primitive” to “modern,” and that anything or anyone who stands in the way is what Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, vehemently damned as a “reactionist.”

The “positivist” assumption was a conscious break with the past; its founder, de Condorcet,[1] was an ideologue of the French Revolution, albeit meeting his fate like many others. Marx was in the same mold. Under the impress of the same zeitgeist, Darwinism was applied to social history and economics and used to justify another type of revolution: the industrial, and nineteenth-century positivists, including Social Darwinists, confidentially saw the nineteenth century as the culmination of all hitherto existing societies. This optimism among the highest intellectual circles was cogently expressed by A. R. Wallace, who was next to Darwin in importance in propounding the theory of evolution: “Not only is our century superior to any that have gone before it but . . . it may be best compared with the whole preceding historical period. It must therefore be held to constitute the beginning of a new era of human progress . . .”[2]

As a reminder that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are trapped in the same mental straitjacket of “progress” and, ironically, that historical perspectives have not “progressed” beyond the dogmatic assumptions of de Condorcet, Marx, or Wallace, influential academics such as Francis Fukuyama assure us with the same certainty that liberal democracy, under the auspices of the United States, is not only the culmination of all hitherto existing history, but that it is equally applicable to all humans. Moreover, once its universal dispensation has been achieved, this will be literally “the end of history,” and there will be global happiness via production and consumption, and aesthetics will have become so deadened that there is no differentiation between Beethoven and pop.[3] This description is not a spoof or satire.

What is assumed is that man, as a “higher animal,” is so detached from nature that he can mold himself into whatever form he desires, and that the method and aim are justified by a preconceived ideology that shows it to be “true,” whether as Jacobinism, Marxism, or Free Trade. Man, through “social laws,” is above all organic and ecological considerations. It is erroneous for conservatives to assume that Marxism is based on “environmentalism,” considering that the Marxist doctrine states that by changing the environment – under socialism – human nature is thereby changed. Rather, Marxism regards the laws of ecology, just as much as “biologism,” as the laws of Mendelian hereditary, and Marxist regimes tried to overcome both.[4] Hence, doctrines that insist that man is subject only to social laws and the laws of production – that is, doctrines of economic reductionism, whether of the socialistic or capitalistic varieties (both stem from the same outlook) – insist in a hubristic manner that humanity is impelled towards a Promethean conquest of all nature, and can without restraint impose its will upon the universe. What is required is an understanding of the laws of social progress that circumvent all others. How cynical that Marxists entered en masseinto the ranks of the ecological and “green” movements – initiatives of the Right – after the Marxist failure to make any headway among the “international proletariat,” that only existed in the imaginings of reading-room ideologues!

The restraint that was so condemned by Marx as “reactionism,” and meets the same chorus of hatred today by “progressives” of all persuasions, is the anchor of tradition. So far from being a regressive personality trait, it is a trait of mature wisdom, drawing on the accumulation of millennia of experience and epigenetically conveyed over generations as “culture” and “custom.” It is what is ridiculed by the “progressives” – who, in their feigned intellectualism, have discarded, obscured, slandered, or buried those who really did seek to understand the nature of being human, whether as philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Anthony Ludovici, and Oswald Spengler,[5] or as scientists, such as the physiologist Alexis Carrel, the zoologist Konrad Lorenz, the psychologist Carl Jung, or the present-day biologist Rupert Sheldrake.[6]

Carl Jung

Carl Jung, father of analytical psychology, made the point that Western man’s psyche is not keeping pace with his technology. The levels of our unconscious are multi-layered, reaching back to primordial existence, yet Western technology has exponentially leaped ahead, leaving behind the anchorage of tradition in the acclaimed “march of progress.” Jung wrote of this:

Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The “newness” of the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character and find no place in what is new. That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly at home in things that have just come into being. We are certainly far from having finished with the middle ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless we have plunged into a cataract of progress which sweeps us into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it take us from our ranks. The less we understand of what our forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts.[7]

The psyche becomes fractured in contending with a discrepancy between millennia of ancestral experiences and the jolt of what is “modern,” and which aims to discard such primordial wisdom as redundant. Mentally fractured individuals create socially-fractured entities still inaccurately named “societies,” with a multitude of social pathogens. Jung considered the ultimate aim of the individual to be “individuation,” the integration of the fractured parts of the psyche of the individual, and beyond that, of the collective unconscious of the race and of society.

Alexis Carrel

Alexis Carrel was a Nobel Prizewinning physiologist. He departed from the safety, comfort, and fame of life in the United States to return to his native France in a time of need to work during the war with the National Revolutionary regime of Marshal Petain. Carrel was also concerned with the degeneration and fracturing of “modern man” caused by progressivism. In his best-selling 1937 book, Man the Unknown, Carrel addressed these problems:

[M]en cannot follow modern civilization along its present course, because they are degenerating. They have been fascinated by the beauty of the sciences of inert matter. They have not understood that their body and consciousness are subjected to natural laws, more obscure than, but as inexorable as, the laws of the sidereal world. Neither have they understood that they cannot transgress these laws without being punished.

They must, therefore, learn the necessary relations of the cosmic universe, of their fellow men, and of their inner selves, and also those of their tissues and their mind. Indeed, man stands above all things. Should he degenerate, the beauty of civilization, and even the grandeur of the physical universe, would vanish . . . Humanity’s attention must turn from the machines of the world of inanimate matter to the body and the soul of man, to the organic and mental processes which have created the machines and the universe of Newton and Einstein.[8]

Carrel, like Jung, was not a materialist; he regarded the “soul” as important, if still not understood by science. Science has resolved very little of the great questions of life, wrote Carrel, and civilization was having a degenerative affect:

We are very far from knowing what relations exist between skeleton, muscles, and organs, and mental and spiritual activities. We are ignorant of the factors that bring about nervous equilibrium and resistance to fatigue and to diseases. We do not know how moral sense, judgment, and audacity could be augmented. What is the relative importance of intellectual, moral, and mystical activities? What is the significance of aesthetic and religious sense? What form of energy is responsible for telepathic communications? Without any doubt, certain physiological and mental factors determine happiness or misery, success or failure. But we do not know what they are. We cannot artificially give to any individual the aptitude for happiness. As yet, we do not know what environment is the most favorable for the optimum development of civilized man. Is it possible to suppress struggle, effort, and suffering from our physiological and spiritual formation? How can we prevent the degeneracy of man in modern civilization? Many other questions could be asked on subjects which are to us of the utmost interest. They would also remain unanswered. It is quite evident that the accomplishments of all the sciences having man as an object remain insufficient, and that our knowledge of ourselves is still most rudimentary.[9]

In a conclusion similar to that of Jung on the discrepancy between the exponential advances of mechanical and material civilization and of the human conscious and unconscious, Carrel warned:

The environment which has molded the body and the soul of our ancestors during many millenniums has now been replaced by another. This silent revolution has taken place almost without our noticing it. We have not realized its importance. Nevertheless, it is one of the most dramatic events in the history of humanity. For any modification in their surroundings inevitably and profoundly disturbs all living beings. We must, therefore, ascertain the extent of the transformations imposed by science upon the ancestral mode of life, and consequently upon ourselves.[10]

Modern civilization finds itself in a difficult position because it does not suit us. It has been erected without any knowledge of our real nature. It was born from the whims of scientific discoveries, from the appetites of men, their illusions, their theories, and their desires. Although constructed by our efforts, it is not adjusted to our size and shape.[11]

Konrad Lorenz

Konrad Lorenz, the father of the science of ethology, the study of instinct, gave a warning from an ecological viewpoint, that the abandonment of customs and traditions is steeped with dangers which are likely to be unforeseen. Culture is “cumulative tradition.”[12] It is knowledge passed through generations, preserved as belief or custom. The deep wisdom accrued by our ancestors, because it might be wrapped in the protection of religions and myths, is discounted by the “modern” as “superstitious” and “unscientific.” Lorenz referred to the “enormous underestimation of our nonrational, cultural fund, and the equal overestimation of all that man is able to produce with his intellect” as factors “threatening our civilization with destruction.”

Giambattista Vico,[13] a precursor to Spengler, tried to warn about this superficiality of intellectualization and its rejection of tradition – including religion – at the time of the Renaissance, the much-lauded beginning of the epoch of the West’s decay. Ibn Khaldun attempted the same when there was still something left of the Islamic civilization,[14] on the verge of becoming fellaheen, as Spengler called such spent civilizations, or historically passé. We can say the same about Cato, and many others faced by the “progressives” of their own civilization when entering upon the epoch of decay. “Progress” is one of the great illusions of our time, just as it was in the analogous epochs of other civilizations over the course of thousands of years.[15] If Jeremiah, Cato, or Herodotus were to be transported to this time in the West, they might laugh or sneer at the banal slogans of our “progressives” and “moderns,” and reply, “I’ve seen it all before . . . and it does not end well.”

“Being enlightened is no reason for confronting transmitted tradition with hostile arrogance,” stated Lorenz. Writing at a time when the New Left was rampant, as it is today under other names, Lorenz observed that the attitude of youth towards parents shows a great deal of “conceited contempt but no understanding.”[16] Lorenz perceived a great deal of the psychosis of the Left as a pathogen in the social organism, as it remains today: “The revolt of modern youth is founded on hatred; a hatred closely related to an emotion that is most dangerous and difficult to overcome: national hatred. In other words, today’s rebellious youth reacts to the older generation in the same way that an ‘ethnic’ group reacts to a foreign, hostile one.”[17]

What is of interest is that Lorenz saw this as a youth subculture that was tantamount to a separate, foreign ethnos, when a group forms around its own rites, dress, manners, and norms. In the biological sciences this is called “pseudospeciation.” With this new group identity comes a “corresponding devaluation of the symbols” of other cultural units.[18] The obsession with all that is regarded as “new” among the youth revolt was described by Lorenz as “physiological neophilia.” While this is necessary to prevent stagnation, it is normally gradual and followed by a return to tradition. Such a balance, however, is easily upset.[19] In the psychology of individuals, fixation at the stage of neophilia results in behavioral abnormalities such as vindictive resentment towards long-dead parents.[20] This lack of respect for tradition is aggravated by the breakdown of traditional social hierarchy, mass organization, and “a money-grabbing race against itself”[21] that dominates the Late West.

Since Lorenz wrote of these symptoms of Western decay during the 1970s, the Western social organism has continued to fracture, and as one would expect, it has been exponential – a collective rush to insanity that is ironically upheld as “healthy” by humanistic psychologists, who are themselves afflicted with the psychosis and produce papers and books “proving” that, to cite the latest “progressive” fad, one’s gender is a matter of choice. Again we confront the ideological opposition to “biologism” that kept Lysenko in a job.

Destruction of Symbols is Symbolic

There is now the presence – vastly greater than in Lorenz’s time – of actual ethnoi that have no attachment to the West, but maintain a great resentment. There is also further pseudospeciation among women in terms of radical feminism and “gays,” possessing their own manners, rites, dress, terms of speech, and even their own flags and other symbols. They are united in their hatred of the West, denigrated as “white patriarchy”; with its symbols being torn down and its heroes ridiculed as “dead white males.” The destruction of the traditional symbols of one’s forefathers is a redirected form of matricide and patricide that became a doctrine during the psychotic days of the New Left, among the “Weathermen” and Yippies and so on during the 1960s, when Charles Manson became a revolutionary hero, and Jerry Rubin rejoiced in the death of his mother – who, had it not been for cancer, he would have had to murder.[22] We currently witness the group psychosis of the New-New Left in the compulsion to destroy Confederate monuments, and the frenzied, atavistic hitting and kicking at toppled bronze statues with the frenzy of the Italian mob kicking at the lifeless bodies of Mussolini and Clara Petacci.

This vandalism of the symbols and monuments of tradition is a substitute for murder, such as is unleashed during revolution, like that directed at Confederate memorial statues; by official decree at the statues of General Franco in Spain; and the recent abortive effort to get a statue of New Zealand colonial officer Colonel Marmaduke Nixon torn down, presumably as the beginning of a process, through a colossal distortion of colonial history.[23] It is in each case an example of trying to obliterate the tradition that serves as an anchor, without which hubris leads to self-destruction. In other circumstances, these types – and they are types – would have been burning churches in Spain, or destroying ancient monuments in Iraq.

Notes

[1] Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1955).

[2] A. R. Wallace, The Wonderful Century(London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1985).

[3] Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?”, The National Interest, Summer 1989.

[4] K. R. Bolton, The Decline and Fall of Civilisations (London: Black House Publishing, 2017), pp. 121-124.

[5] Oswald Spengler, The Decline of The West(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971).

[6] Rupert Sheldrake, “Morphic resonance: Introduction.”

[7] C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections(New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), pp. 235-236.

[8] Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown (Sydney: Angus & Robertson Ltd., 1937), Preface, p. xi.

[9] Carrel, I, p. 1.

[10] Carrel, I, p. 3.

[11] Carrel, I, p. 4.

[12] Konrad Lorenz, Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), p. 61.

[13] Giambattista Vico, The New Science of Giambattista Vico (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1948).

[14] Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, tr. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1969).

[15] Bolton, The Decline and Fall of Civilisations, passim.

[16] Lorenz, p. 64.

[17] Lorenz, p. 64.

[18] Lorenz, pp. 64-65.

[19] Lorenz, p. 69.

[20] Lorenz, pp. 69-70.

[21] Lorenz, p. 73.

[22] Jerry Rubin, Growing (Up) at 37 (New York: Warner Books, 1976), pp. 140-142. This is followed with a few elaborations that enter new realms of psychosis. See K. R. Bolton, The Psychotic Left (London: Black House Publishing, 2013).

[23] Farah Hancock, Newsroom, September 8, 2017, “South Auckland’s Uncomfortable History.”

A Microcosm Of Whining

                         By Elias Christakos

              

One of the first perks I took advantage of upon recently moving to a big city was the much wider selection of concerts. The modest Lutheran town I hail from did not offer much in the way of bone-powdering metal shows, and as such I have already attended more live performances in the past few months than I had in my entire life prior to the move. The metal connoisseur in me has never been happier.

All good things must come to an end, however, and the corrosive forces within Western civilization are working overtime to police white people’s fun. I had bought tickets to a show featuring the Finnish black metal act Horna, only for the show to be hastily cancelled barely a week before it was set to take place. A friend more in the know told me that it’s part of the wave of black metal show cancellations being pushed from rags such as MetalSucks. I jokingly responded to him by simply putting MetalSucks in triple parentheses. I was vaguely familiar with MetalSucks, but never paid them much mind, so a short few seconds later I rushed to Google to see if my joke had any bearing in reality. Essentially, this meme came to life.

Perhaps meme magic had subverted the fabric of reality to retroactively fulfill my tongue-in-cheek comment. Whatever it was, the TMZ of heavy metal is, in fact, run by two New York Jews who gave themselves the monikers of Axl Rosenberg and Vince Neilstein – Jewish variations on the names of rock heroes Axl Rose and Vince Neil. And naturally, they spend the bulk of their time whining about the kinds of politics that Jews hate in metal.

For those who don’t wish to give them traffic, the entire article consists of our dear Axl Rosenberg piecing together the past associations of Horna’s members with NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal). The accusations have nothing to do with the actual content of Horna’s music, of course, as Horna’s lyrical themes consist solely of Satanism, occultism, and anti-Christianity. And even if every one of their songs had the theme of throwing Jews into ovens, it is likely that not many people attending their American shows would be any the wiser, as their lyrics are exclusively in Finnish.

No white supremacy here, just wholesome devil worship.

Imagine Paul Joseph Watson’s shock if he heard about this: exactly one day after the article was published, MetalSucks penned a follow-up article confirming that at least four Horna shows (and counting) have been cancelled. Horna responded on their official Facebook page with the following cuckolded surrender statement:

Perhaps these events seem insignificant in the grand scheme of our struggles, but this entire ordeal is a microcosm of how the Jewish stranglehold on the West came to be. The early black metal scene dabbled in church burnings and murder, yet black metal today stands powerless in the face of two Jews whining. Suddenly, the edgiest music genre in existence has antifa nannies policing it for hate-speech violations.

Horna’s meek response actually begets this very phenomenon. Imagine how much it kills their Satanic, leather-bound, corpse-painted image to have to virtue-signal about how totally not racist they are. It should raise alarm bells in normal people’s minds that a band has to ensure they’re not racist, but merely Satanic. For literal millennia, someone would have had to assure the public that the opposite was true. It is only in recent decades that social norms have been inverted. Besides, surely nobody actually believes they have “zero interest in politics” when Axl Rosenberg laid out a convincing case that at least some of their members care about their people’s survival – or at the very least are indifferent to working with others who do.

Having just attended the show near me, which had to be relocated, I feel it pertinent to mention that the bassist had an Iron Cross on his shirt – probably not the best symbol to present if one is honestly trying to convince people of his egalitarian beliefs. Whether or not the shirt was meant to be ironic or not, given the controversy, is a mystery to me – but it’s a hilarious little detail I couldn’t help but mention.

The high social costs placed on white people who fight back against this agenda is precisely why even black metal is now susceptible to this kind of social justice sabotage. Our people have resigned themselves to being bullied by a vocal minority who cry out as they strike you, and all it takes to put an end to it is to collectively say “no.” The correct response to MetalSucks would have been to tell them to stuff it, because most people silently disagree with censorship, especially in the United States. Here is just a sample of comments to the two MetalSucks articles (their actual site, too, and not just reposts on social media):

I didn’t witness comment removal, but I have no reason to disbelieve it.

And these are just the comments that haven’t been deleted. There are some comments in support of MetalSucks’ valiant effort, but they’re only half the respondents. Why does the pro-censorship side always get their way? Jews are powerful, but they aren’t numerous enough to flex totalitarian power over all the world’s affairs. In a sense, their power is as wide as an ocean but as deep as a

puddle. MetalSucks can’t force any venue to cancel black metal shows if they don’t want to do so. Similarly, Iceland doesn’t have to listen to the two rabbis who live there, who almost singlehandedly shut down the country’s effort to ban circumcision just by kvetching.

The silver lining is that Horna has wasted no time in gloating on social media over the antifa’s inability to prevent them from playing, as they found new venues to host their shows. The initial statement they made on Facebook left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, but I’m ecstatic to see them come out on top in light of the controversy.

Warning! All Military Careers Are Swiftboatable

 By Morris V. De Camp

 

Eli Mosley, caught in the act

Recently, the New York Times claimed to have exposed the exaggerations of military valor of Eli Mosley, an Alt-Right “leader.”[1]Before proceeding further, this author must question exactly how a living military veteran’s record was acquired by a newspaper. According to the website of the National Archives, “Authorized Third Party Requesters, e.g., lawyers, doctors, historians, etc., may submit requests for information from individual records with the veteran’s, or next-of-kin’s, signed and dated authorization. They should state who they are in relation to the individual and the purpose of the request. All authorizations should specify exactly what the veteran (or next-of-kin) is allowing to be released to a third party.”[2]

In light of the above, the New York Timesmay be lying entirely, may have unethically acquired the record, or Mosley could have foolishly authorized its release thinking his exaggerations were unable to be discovered. However, the truth or falsehood of the Eli Mosley’s military accomplishments, as well as the NYT’s claims is not relevant to this article. The purpose of this article is to point out the risks and rewards of using one’s military service to advance one’s political interests.

To state the bottom line up front, all military careers are swiftboatable in a political sense.

This verb, “to switboat” refers to (then) President George W. Bush calling into question the patriotism and valor of (then) Senator John F. Kerry during the Vietnam War in the 2004 campaign. President Bush’s family connections got him a coveted pilot’s spot in the Texas National Guard where he safely sat out the Vietnam War. Senator Kerry had actually served in Nam on US Navy Swiftboats and while there saw action. In other words, the draft dodger called a real combat vet a coward, and it stuck.

The problem with using military service to advance one’s political career is that unless one becomes the commanding general of a conquering army that leaves the enemy broken and prostrate, there is always something possible to criticize. Success in the military ultimately comes to how a individual defines it, but in politics, one’s rivals can always say so-and-so didn’t make Sergeant, didn’t pass Ranger School, broke his leg on a peacetime jump, got caught by the North Vietnamese, only ran messages etc.

Past Examples of Swiftboating

Swiftboating has been around for quite some time. The Greeks[3] and Romans[4]swiftboated each other a great deal. In the American context, the Blackhawk War, fought in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa in 1832 has a great many instances of swiftboating. The reason for this is that participants in that conflict included a great many sons of famous politicians as well as future famous politicians and those men did what politicians do. A partial list of participants include future Illinois Governor Thomas Ford, future Wisconsin governor Henry Dodge, the son of Alexander Hamilton, William, Daniel Boone’s son Nathan, future US Presidents Zachary Taylor and Abraham Lincoln, and future Confederate States President Jefferson Davis.

Governor Ford writes of an instance of swiftboating in his 1854 book A History of Illinois from its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847. He describes how an Army doctor named Addison Philleo promoted Henry Dodge’s accomplishments in the papers, thus downplaying the accomplishments of General Henry,[5] the actual commander.[6] Dr. Philleo also scalped a dead Indian he came across to prove his “valor.”[7] (Notice here, the use of scare quotes to swiftboat Dr. Philleo.)

Art vs. Science

In the military, there are two different types of jobs. The first is a military job that is science. A Navigator, Artillery Fire Direction Specialist, and the Mid-air Refueler, are jobs that are science. The job is one of looking at the data and making the correct decision. One’s aircraft is over Tokyo or not. The target is in range of the battery’s guns or not. There is gas available or not.

The other type of job is that of art. The Public Affairs Officer, the Air Campaign Planner, and the Special Forces Trainer have a wide variety of ways to accomplish their mission and the mission is accomplished with a varying degree of perceived success. The navigators, pilots, and bombers involved in the Iraq War “Shock and Awe Campaign” carried out their science well. The strategic planners involved in the art of the “Shock and Awe Campaign” took down the Iraqi government, but didn’t end Iraqi resistance. The art involved in “Shock and Awe,” didn’t work out.

In other words, politically being a pilot navigating through belts of anti-aircraft fire is more difficult to politically criticize than being a plans officer in the Air Operations Center managing the campaign.

Be Humble About Your Service

Successful politicians who are also combat veterans don’t publicly boast. If they do, it usually doesn’t work. Senator Joseph McCarthy, for example, was derided as “Tailgunner Joe” by a hostile press. Several examples of non-boasting combat veterans, but successful politicians include:

1. Abraham Lincoln. He joked about his military service. He quipped, “I had a good many struggles with the mosquitos.”[8]

2. Dwight Eisenhower. After a long military career and presiding over the Second World War, the Korean War, and worsening Cold War he said in 1963, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”[9] He also didn’t boast about D-Day. Instead, in interviews about the subject he only regretted those that died.

3. President Nixon. He didn’t say much about his service although his base in the Solomon Islands was bombed “twenty-eight nights out of thirty.”[10]

4. George McGovern. Flew 35 bomber missions during World War II, “…[W]ould not allow his staff to publicize his wartime heroism.”[11] In his speech announcing his run for President, he didn’t mention his service at all.[12]

5. Adolf Hitler. According to his biographer R. H. S. Stolfi, “As a regimental runner, [Hitler] carried messages to the battalions and line companies of the regiment, and the more important ones had to be delivered under outrageously dangerous circumstances involving movement through artillery fire and, particularly later in the war, poison gas and the omnipresent rifle fire of the skilled British sniper detachments.”[13]Nonetheless, Hitler didn’t boast about his military career and historians are still not entirely certain what exact acts of heroism he did to get his two Iron Cross Medals. He has been partially swiftboated because his job as a dispatch runner can be perceived as “rear echelon.”

6. George Lincoln Rockwell. He wrote, “My experiences in [the Pacific] would make a book, but others who have had far more thrilling and readable experiences have already set forth this sort of thing for all to read. My task is to pick out the experiences which had special significance in shaping my own character and political career.”[14]

Other politicians have used leaks and metapolitical cultural works to use their combat experience to their political benefit, but that still doesn’t always work. President Kennedy got the movie PT 109 out in 1963 in preparation for the 1964 election, but since Kennedy was killed that year it is uncertain if this movie would have helped. How again did PT 109 sink? The film is vague on that point. President George H.W. Bush made sure that his war record was mentioned in the press, but he didn’t boast himself. He still lost the 1992 election – to a draft dodger.

In fact, a good example of a successful military career is that of Elvis Presley. Presley only got a single medal: The Good Conduct Medal. He served for two years and didn’t see combat. However, he was on the Cold War front lines and participated in serious and difficult training. In only two years he did make sergeant during his enlistment, which is a considerable accomplishment. One historian said it best, “He served honorably and faithfully: he mastered his military duties, he was liked by his comrades and respected by his superiors, and in all ways proved an outstanding representative of the service. Had the Soviet-American war that most of his peers viewed as inevitable occurred, there is little doubt that he, along with hundreds of thousands of others then wearing army green would have died. But like others of his generation who had grown up around combat veterans, he dismissed any suggestion he was a hero for wearing a uniform.”[15]

If humbly applied, this sort of service can work politically.

Notes

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/insider/confronting-a-white-nationalist-eli-mosley.html

[2] https://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/public

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arginusae

[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintus_Caecilius_Metellus_Numidicus

[5] https://books.google.com/books?id=lkgWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=addison+philleo&source=bl&ots=DNKg_cHadF&sig=MnUUDiUlrRLpwz01gxVPXwO30MQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiI3-zYxpbZAhURtlMKHT07DG4Q6AEIMDAC#v=onepage&q=addison%20philleo&f=false

[6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D._Henry

[7] https://books.google.com/books?id=GAyA6ninhBQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=scalp&f=false

[8] https://books.google.com/books?id=IGsgHTorgS8C&pg=PA40&dq=Stillman%27s+Lincoln#v=onepage&q=Stillman%27s%20Lincoln&f=false

[9]http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/ike_chance_for_peace.html

[10]https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2010/01/nixon-in-the-navy/

[11]https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/george-mcgovern-flew-b-24-combat-missions/

[12]http://www.4president.org/speeches/1972/mcgovern1972announcement.htm

[13] Stolfi, R. H. S, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny, Prometheus books, Amherst, NY, 2011, Page 96

[14] Rockwell, George Lincoln, This Time the World, Liberty Bell Publications, 2004 Page 89

[15] Linn, Brian McAllister, Elvis’s Army: Cold War GIs and the Atomic Battlefield, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: 2016 Page 5

The Limitations Of The Military Mind

                        By Morris V. De Camp

         

The Limits of the Letter

James “Mad Dog” Mattis, USMC, has resigned – or been fired, depending on who you believe – as the Secretary of Defense in response to President Trump’s decision to withdraw US forces from Syria and draw down in Afghanistan. This resignation is the closing of a circle, so to speak. America’s shift from an isolationist position to a more aggressive interventionist and alliance-seeking one began when William Jennings Bryan resigned as Secretary of State on June 9, 1915. It thus seems fitting to see a resignation as a result of a policy change back towards non-intervention – albeit a highly limited one.

This article’s purpose is not to swiftboat Secretary Mattis. As I’ve written before, all military careers are easily swiftboatable. Mattis had some issues as SecDef, but in my view they were small. The two collisions involving US Navy vessels that occurred in 2017 were not unprecedented; the fire on the USS Forrestal in 1967, under Robert McNamara, was a much bigger naval mishap. But the War in Afghanistan is playing out for the United States and Great Britain much like how it played out for the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Regardless, all of these negatives are easily countered by much greater accomplishments, such as ISIS evaporating during Mattis’ term, and his successful deployment of US troops to defend against the migrant caravan.

What needs to be pointed out, however, is the utter lack of genuine thought in Secretary Mattis’ resignation letter. The letter can be read here. Much of the letter is standard Department of Defense boilerplate: “men and women in uniform,” “ideals,” “progress that has been made,” and so on. The problem of the genuine lack of vision is summed up in two very serious paragraphs in the middle of the letter. In the first paragraph, Secretary Mattis writes:

One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies.

This paragraph contains three basic assumptions that should be examined:

1. The strength of the United States is linked to its comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships.

2. The United States is the indispensable nation of the free world.

3. America must respect allies.

The first point is highly dubious. Managing the comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships is no easy task, and tends to embroil America in others’ problems. First, many of those in the “comprehensive system” are mortal enemies with one another, such as the Turks and the Kurds. Second, some of these allies have had clashes with the US as well. France, for example, was out of NATO’s command structure from 1967 until 2009 due to political differences. And under this system, America’s problems likewise become others’ problems. Given that most of Europe is in NATO, one might imagine that there is resentment due to the fact that NATO’s Article 5 (an attack on one member is an attack on all) has only been invoked once, and that sucked all members into the endless War in Afghanistan. Article 5 was invoked because of 9/11, and 9/11 occurred in part because of America’s lax immigration policies and support for Israel, neither of which was Europe’s fault. Indeed, as George Washington said regarding alliances, “The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.”

The point about the US being an indispensable nation is laughable. The laws of history don’t stop for America, but more important is Mattis’ use of the term “free world.” This is a Cold War term, one which became irrelevant since 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved. To use such a term indicates that one is mentally trapped in the past. One can discuss “The Core vs. The Gap” or “the clash of civilizations,” but sorry, folks, the Soviet Union is long gone, and so is “the free world.”

Perhaps the most alarming thing Mattis endorses is “respect” for allies. Naming “respect” as a central goal of any endeavor is to fatally wound it from the get-go. The loudest cries for “respect” come from those who least deserve it, and its definition is also conditional. Is America “respecting” Turkey when they protect the Kurds from Turkish troops? By putting “respect” at the center of an endeavor, any malcontent or sub-par entity can insist that they aren’t being “respected,” regardless of the circumstances. “Respect” as a primary goal cedes authority to others.

The next paragraph also deserves a look. Mattis writes:

It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions – to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies.

It is true that China and Russia are rivals of the United States. The US must therefore match the military technology developed by Russia, in part because these weapons get sold to other nations and groups and are then used against American forces (like the T-72 tank and the AK-47 rifle). There are also all sorts of cyberwarfare issues one needs to deal with. However, both of these rivals are limited in their reach. China, for example, doesn’t develop weapons; it copies designs stolen from others. Additionally, if one really wants to clip China’s rise, endorsing a Trump-style trade policy is the rational way to do this, rather than through force. Lastly, China’s history is one of stability for several decades, followed by decades of instability. It might not take much for China to implode.

Russia’s ability to project power has also been limited since the end of the Cold War. When Communism still had global appeal, Russia as the Soviet Union could influence events around the world. Since the end of Communism, this capability has vanished. Now Russia is primarily confined to being a regional power. One reason it has been fighting so hard to defend Assad’s regime in Syria is that this is their last outpost of political-military influence outside of their immediate neighbors.

The Limited Military Men of the Past

General Mattis is indeed accomplished, but as mentioned above, his mentality is quite limited. But he is not alone in this. Consider:

1. General Henry “Old Brains” Halleck was considered “a first-rate clerk” by President Lincoln. Union strategy during the Civil War was directed by Bible-quoting politicians, such as President Lincoln himself and his Secretary of War. As Georges Clemenceau said, “War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.”

2. General Westmoreland actually believed that the South Vietnamese liked Americans more than the French because the Americans paid for sex there, unlike the French.

3. General Colin Powell really did hold up a vial of “anthrax” and claim the Iraqis had WMDs. If he really didn’t believe it, as he later implied, why did he do this?

4. General Casey really did endorse diversity after a highly predictable attack by a “diverse” field-grade officer on unarmed people at Fort Hood.

5. General McChrystal got a bit too open with a Rolling Stone reporter, and his unflattering remarks about the Obama administration went viral. It is probable that McChrystal allowed a falsified story about the death of the celebrity recruit, Corporal Pat Tillman, to be distributed, also. These incidents showed a lack of judgement and discernment, and a willingness to misread data.

Why the Limit?

Since the end of the draft in the United States, America has adopted veteran worship. Part of this cult involves granting enormous credibility to fast-talking generals who say things which appear to pierce the veil of political correctness. General Mattis rose to the top in part because he said things like, “There are some assholes in the world that just need to be shot.”

It is important to remember that at the time when the draft was in effect, veteran worship didn’t exist, and general officers were viewed along the lines of Beetle Bailey’s General Halftrack, or the leapfrog-playing leaders in Oh! What a Lovely War (1969). There were also popular TV shows like M*A*S*H and Sergeant Bilko, which lampooned military life and military “lifers.”

And in truth, the military mind is indeed a very limited thing. I can only speculate as to why this is so. But part of the problem today is undoubtedly that the American military officially endorses racial integration, especially the integration of Sub-Saharans with whites. Those that best carry out this charade are promoted. There are senior leaders in the Pentagon today who claim to have chased off “The Klan” and “white racists” in their barracks, while in reality, their white female soldiers were being raped by the black junior-level NCOs in their unit. If one really believes in racial integration, one always, always misreads data. (Yet this is correctable.)

Life-long military men coast on what they achieved as teenagers and as young adults. If one passes Airborne or Ranger training – which is only possible when one is young – one sometimes gains more credibility than one deserves and never corrects course. Military men tend to rest on their laurels and cut down anyone who questions their abilities. (This is not correctable. For an example of this, read about the later career of Colonel Steele, famous from the “Black Hawk Down” incident.)

The military is subject to the Peter Principle, which states that in any hierarchy, people are promoted until they reach a position for which they are unsuited. (This is notcorrectable, although the Peter Principle might not always apply.) A military career consists of ticket-punching, where one collects modest accomplishments until one accumulates enough of them to advance to the next level. But ticket-punching career tracks don’t necessarily produce greatness. (This is probably correctable.) And in today’s military, the officer who was selected by affirmative action and the strategic genius are on the same track. (This is probably correctable by introducing brevet ranks in a combat theater.)

In conclusion, what we’ve seen in “Mad Dog” Mattis’ resignation is a sign of a world-historical event, and President Trump’s reputation will be enhanced by it in the same way that Lincoln and Truman were enhanced when they sacked troublesome generals. Ultimately, Mattis should serve as a reminder that while military service is an honorable thing, it is not the sum of all human accomplishment.